Category Archives: Childhood

“In case of tribal societies […] there are two striking aspects with regard to caring for the child and nurturing the young. One is the prevalence of breast feeding and the other is the tradition of kin/community care of the children. It is the kin care that explains as to why it is rare to find destitution and begging among tribal population, including tribal children.” – Virginius Xaxa in “The Status of Tribal Children in India: A historical perspective” (Institute for Human Development and United Nations Children’s Fund, India)
https://www.ihdindia.org/pdf/virginius_xaxa.pdf
https://indiantribalheritage.org/?p=14668

“Only the collaboration between the children and the adults will be able to solve the problems of our time.” – Maria Montessori Madras, (Report on the First Indian Training Course in Education, 11 November 1939); quoted in Maria Montessori Writes to her Grandchildren: letters from India, 1939-1946 (Amsterdam: Montessori-Pierson Publishing Company, 2020), p. 38
https://montessori-pierson.com/india.html
https://worldcat.org/en/title/1273931392
https://indiantribalheritage.org/?p=16037

“The fact that many of those are indigenous languages places at risk the indigenous cultures and knowledge systems to which those languages belong. […] In practical terms, the risk is that parents and elders can no longer transmit indigenous languages to their children and that indigenous languages fall out of daily use.” – “Summary report on the International Year of Indigenous Languages, 2019” (United Nations, 14 February 2020)
https://documents-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N20/040/59/PDF/N2004059.pdf?OpenElement
https://indiantribalheritage.org/?p=46777

“Components like teacher training, regular academic follow-up and comprehensive evaluation were largely ignored by the state government. If urgent steps are not taken, it is likely to affect the learning of tribal children in the classroom, since learning depends on continuous interest and eternal vigilance.” – Joy Daniel Pradhan (Delhi-based development practitioner and an expert on tribal development issues) quoted by Abhijit Mohanty in “Seven decades after independence, many tribal languages in India face extinction threat” (Down to Earth, 26 August 2020)
https://www.downtoearth.org.in/blog/governance/seven-decades-after-independence-many-tribal-languages-in-india-face-extinction-threat-73071
https://indiantribalheritage.org/?p=6879

“Women have profound traditional and contemporary knowledge about the natural world around them and hence there’s a necessity to make policies mindful of the connection between environment and gender. [T]hat’s why it’s largely in the hands of women to sensitise our children towards the ecological heritage. Big changes always begin with small steps and the right place is always the home.” – Writer-activist Mari Marcel Thekaekara (The Hindu, 27 January 2017)
https://www.thehindu.com/society/A-messenger-from-the-mountains/article17102329.ece
https://indiantribalheritage.org/?p=22373

“Mother’s love is unconditional, it is all-protective, all-enveloping; because it is unconditional it can also not be controlled or acquired. Its presence gives the loved person a sense of bliss; its absence produces a sense of lostness and utter despair.” – Social psychologist Erich Fromm in The Art of Loving (New York: Harper & Row, 1956), p. 65
https://archive.org/details/TheArtOfLoving/page/n79/mode/1up
https://indiantribalheritage.org/?p=31882

“About 40 per cent of under five tribal children in India are stunted, and 16 per cent of them are severely stunted.” – Programme report on Tribal nutrition: “UNICEF’s efforts to support the tribal population, especially children who suffer from malnourishment” (Date visited: 6 June 2022)
https://www.unicef.org/india/what-we-do/tribal-nutrition
https://indiantribalheritage.org/?p=11674

“[Tribal] children are preferred for particular works due to the benefit of vigorous toil for low wages. […] Income generation at a very young age reduces the scope for development of other individual resources.” – Ameya MR in “A Case Study of ‘Kanavu’ in the Evolutionary Perspective of Approaches to Education” (MA thesis, Mahatma Gandhi University 2015), p. 57
https://www.academia.edu/21289981
https://indiantribalheritage.org/?p=1847

“A boy tells a girl: Oh Muni, you may have forgotten the days when we played together under the banyan tree. Playfully we cooked dust as if it were rice and tree-leaves as if they were curry. How we used to catch fish together in the muddy water and pull out lotus-roots from the water to eat. Maybe you no longer remember? The girl tells the boy: Remembering our bygone days makes my heart burn, the smile of my child lightens my heart.” – Synopsis by Boro Baski for “Dhuri Daka (Rice made of Dust)”, a song composed and performed by staff and students of the Rolf Schoembs Vidyashram (Non-formal Santal school, Ghosaldanga village, Dist.-Birbhum, West Bengal), included in the Santali video album “Ale Ato” (Our Village)
https://youtu.be/OU15PO8TFnA
https://indiantribalheritage.org/?page_id=25317

“I think that by retaining one’s childhood love of such things as trees, fishes, butterflies and … toads, one makes a peaceful and decent future a little more probable, and that by preaching the doctrine that nothing is to be admired except steel and concrete, one merely makes it a little surer that human beings will have no outlet for their surplus energy except in hatred and leader worship.” – George Orwell in his posthumous volume of essays Shooting an Elephant, quoted by E.M Foster in Two Cheers for Democracy (London: Penguin Books 1976), p. 76
http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/805143625
https://indiantribalheritage.org/?p=34514

“The smart boy or clever girl who is deprived of the opportunity of schooling, or who goes to a school with dismal facilities (not to mention the high incidence of absentee teachers), not only loses the opportunities he or she could have had, but also adds to the massive waste of talent that is a characteristic of the life of our country.” – Nobel Awardee Amartya Sen in The Argumentative Indian (Penguin Books, 2005), p. 344
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Argumentative_Indian
https://indiantribalheritage.org/?page_id=25728

“It is not very difficult to identify the issues related to accessing the educational opportunities by the Adivasi children in general, and children within certain groups in particular. They include difficulties of physical access, the problem of language and culture, and the contrast between the apparent backwardness of these communities as imagined by the authorities and a very different objective reality that upholds a plethora of cultural strengths that can be fruitfully utilised while planning educational initiatives. Utilisation of resources available in the form of educated Adivasi youths would be just one of several to achieve this end.” – Brochure for the report titled “Living World of the Adivasis of West Bengal: An Ethnographic Exploration”, issued on the occasion of the Kolkata International Book Fair 2020
https://indiantribalheritage.org/?p=31882

“We’ve now started a joint project with the government to create a garden and learning resource center for school children.” – Rashneh Pardiwala in “Why It’s Hard to ‘Change Mindsets’ on Environmental Protection Among India’s Elites”; interview on environmental education at her Centre for Environmental Research and Education (CERE) in Mumbai (Asia Blog, 27 July 2015)
https://asiasociety.org/blog/asia/interview-why-its-hard-change-mindsets-environmental-protection-among-indias-elites
https://indiantribalheritage.org/?p=11066

“For the first time, we have witnessed the direct weaponisation of the young in schools. […] But behind this specific incident lie some philosophical flaws. One is the socially instilled belief that uniformity is equality and uniformity is order.” – T.M. Krishna in “Does uniformity bring about equality? Think again” (Deccan Herald, 13 February 2022)
https://www.deccanherald.com/opinion/does-uniformity-bring-about-equality-think-again-1080919.html
https://indiantribalheritage.org/?p=21733